Re: PC won't start


it's a fairly new machine; probably just 2 years. Thinking P4 2.3ghz or
thereabouts.

What a disaster.

Arfa's comments about the PS overloading and shutting down seem to fit
what I am seeing with the lights, but I have carefully inspected all the
capacitors and there doesn't seem to be any visable evidence. Also, it's
a dimension desktop and erverything I read about the capacitor problems
are on Optiplex MBs.

Not quite sure what is next; probably a $30 charge to get it looked at by
one of the local shops.

Thx for the info,

A



"Dave D" <dave_d@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:ob-dnX0Ql724y1HeRVnyiA@xxxxxxxxx:

>
> "Jill" <f@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:Xns974DA4AAF4BA1fchancecom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> likely because it's a Dell, but I thought I would ask for help
>> anyway.
>>
>> So, here's the deal. Things been a POS from the get go, and spent
>> the last year sitting on a desk bearly used (maybe once a month). A
>> couple of months ago my system went down and the Dell became the new
>> home office computer. Since, it's been running 24hrs a day, as I
>> never turn my desktop off (for a number of reasons).
>>
>> Last night I moved it from one room to another and set it back up and
>> when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. I held it down
>> fir a minute to try and reset it and turned the power bar off (which
>> caused the lights on the front of the case to light up breifly <maybe
>> as a means of flushing any risidual power out?>) and then turned the
>> power back on again. After pressing the power button a couple of
>> more times in frustration, IT STARTS!
>>
>> Since its now in my bedroom, I turned it off when I was done and it
>> hasn't been willing to turn on again since. I spent some time
>> screwing with the button, but no go.
>>
>> So, I figure its the power supply. Swapped it out for the one from
>> the broken system (since it was the mobo that went on that one) and I
>> ended up with a very strange result. The new PS is a Super Flower
>> 350W/370W (? if that makes sense) and has three fan settings. Each
>> of these settings has its own colour light (blue, green and red) to
>> make it easy to see what speed you have it on. Now, with this new PS
>> in, when turn the PS on, I get a flash of lights on the front of the
>> case, the fan spins for a second and then the fan light goes very
>> dim. Its still on, but very faint. When I press the power button on
>> the front of the case, still nothing happens. When I turn the PS
>> off, I get the same thing; fan light gets bright, fan spins for a
>> sec, lights on front of case, then the power goes off.
>>
>> unplugged everything, but 1 stick of RAM, 1 HD, and that's about it.
>>
>> Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated.
>>
>> A
>>
>
> You don't say how old it is, but some years ago (around the PII era
> IIRC) Dell were much criticised for switching the pinouts around on
> their power supplies and motherboards, so you had to buy their exact
> replacements. Fitting a standard ATX power supply was seemingly
> straightforward as there was no obvious clue they were different, but
> as soon as it wss powered on, there was catastrophic failure of the
> motherboard and/or the power supply, or if one was lucky the power
> supply would just shut down before any damage was done. I'd check the
> Dell power supply is indeed a standard type, which it will be if it's
> fairly recent.
>
> Dave
>
>

.